The lectionary readings for the first Sunday in Advent are as follows:
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 (7)
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37
The predominate focus of these scriptures is on the Parousia. What strikes me about the passage in Mark is Christ's analogy of a man leaving his servants with an assigned task. In all of Jesus' instructions about the final judgment, the criteria is not how correct are one's beliefs, but how one served. We in the church place a good amount of time concerning ourselves with correct doctrine, and that is important because how we believe informs how we live, spend our time and understand reality, but it is Christ who transforms. Truth that arrives not just in doctrines or statements or creeds, but truth in the flesh, God incarnate.
Today is the first Sunday in the church year. I gathered together with other Christians to be the Church in receiving Christ's body and blood in order to be transformed so that I may reflect Christ's light to the world. In this season of Advent, when we remember the prophets and their telling of the one who would come to save, even as we look for his return, I want to take more seriously how Christ is transforming me and be about the task he has given.
Fortunately God gave us the entirety of Sacred Scripture and not these few verses. John 4:23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.'
ReplyDeleteEveryone seems to like the spirit but are so quick to dismiss the truth. Correct doctrine is extremely important as we all live out what we believe, our works manifest our doctrines. Our Creeds preserve and tell us who God is. To deny any of the truths handed down to us is to do immense harm to ourselves and others Jesus said `If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.
Bad doctrine is such a stumbling block. It hinders one from knowing God to the fullest extent in which we are made and to serve our fellow man. Doctrine developed erroneously can even present to use an entirely different Jesus. The Jesus who is taught to not be the second person of the Trinity such as in Mormonism and JW's for example is very different from the Truth of who Jesus is and makes demand totally unreconcilable with authentic Christianity. The followers of these sects are immeasurably hurt by these errors. Bad moral teaching can hurt our neighbors for instance the denominations that approve of the evil of abortion.
Those that made up false doctrines as these among all the other errors of faith and morals taught by so many are the false prophets spoken of in the text of Mark you cite and they will be judged severly.
The Truth Matters as not to know it is not to fully know Jesus who is the Truth.
I think perhaps you missed this part of my post,
ReplyDelete"We in the church place a good amount of time concerning ourselves with correct doctrine, and that is important because how we believe informs how we live, spend our time and understand reality, but it is Christ who transforms. Truth that arrives not just in doctrines or statements or creeds, but truth in the flesh, God incarnate."
I never have, nor will deny the importance of correct teaching, but I do think we don't always allow Jesus to enter our lives fully and that is just as damaging as poor doctrine. Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is in him that the completeness of truth is expressed and experienced. We sometimes let biblicism get in the way of our being truly transformed.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that believing oneself to be holding the correct doctrines without allowing oneself to be transformed by Jesus is empty, and not really understanding truth at all. I think it is very easy to fall into this way of life. Just look at the Pharisees. I have very often fallen into this way of being, unfortunately.
I understood it just fine it was written clear enough. You sum up the same problem in your response that you presented in your original blog post.
ReplyDelete"I guess what I'm trying to say is that believing oneself to be holding the correct doctrines without allowing oneself to be transformed by Jesus is empty, and not really understanding truth at all."
You seem to me at least to be treating correct doctrines as somehow divorced from knowing God and from serving Him and each other. Yet are we not transformed by them? We are lead into them as you seem to be emphasizing and we are also be lead by them into a deeper knowledge of Him. Is it not correct doctrines that lead us into Baptism?
Pray the Apostles and Nicene Creed deeply do you not see how they can be used to draw us deeper to Him? To know Him more deeply as He is? Are we not through them with the Holy Spirit, who guided the Church to present them to all the Faithful, led deeper into the transformative knowledge of God and His will for us?
To sum up what I am trying to say is that is through correct doctrines we are presented the Truth, that it is the Truth that saves, that heals, that gives strength to endure, that it is the Holy Spirit that leads us into all truth. One is not in conflict with the other each supports the other and protects us. This is what led Justin Martyr to realize and proclaim Christianity as the true philosophy.
It is after all Jesus who established and gave us His Church which is protected by the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all Truth. A three legged stool each supporting and affirming the other Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magestium. Correct doctrine protects us from worshipping a false or maybe just incomplete/less than we were given version of God. Sign post along the way to point out we are on the right road.
This is well attested to in Scripture. St. Paul tells us that the Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. So through her doctrines and creeds we can be sure we are receiving the truth. How else can the Church say in Acts 15 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things... and all the Sacred Councils since.
You quote "Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life." Amen. Many false teaches believe this as well as they believe that what they heard the have heard from Jesus. But have they? If we were to approach the faith in this way could we not also be lead astray as those in the gospel reading you are commenting on? Jesus is clear they will be judged severely for presenting this false gospel.
But how are we to know? St. John tells us how in 1 John 4:6 We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Again we are presented with the Church the pillar and foundation of truth to be that sign post that we are on the right road a sign post so sure that we can test the spirits by it.
It is though the Church He comes to us and we receive Him. We can trust the Church and be lead to a deeper relationship with the Way, the Truth and the Life.
The better we know the Creeds and doctrine is to better know God. And yes you are most correct we need to let God in and spend time with us and hear His voice but it needs to be His voice and He has gave us the Church to be sure. As a Catholic you should know we are required to form ourselves in the Faith handed on to the Apostles by our Lord Jesus Christ who promises the gates of Hell will not prevail. Be comforted by this all these things are given us by God and are working together to bring us safely to Him and each other.
as Providence would have it. Fr. Barron has just posted a YouTube video on this very topic. He of course says it better and clearer http://www.wordonfire.org/WOF-TV/Commentaries-New/Fr-Barron-comments-on-What-you-believe-makes-a.aspx
ReplyDeleteFirst I need to say that I am not a Roman Catholic. I consider myself, as C.S. Lewis might say, a mere Christian. I am a member of a Lutheran congregation, though read broadly works by Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians, including C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, Peter Kreeft, G.K. Chesterton, Richard Hays, Michael Gorman, Scot McKnight, Alexander Schmemann, et al. I take it as a compliment that you assumed I am Catholic, as one of my goals is to remain non-sectarian and merely Christian in my writing. What I hope to write on this blog is how to work out following Jesus more closely, and, to continue with a Lewis analogy, to sometimes leave our rooms and meet in the hall for fellowship and discussion. I hope this blog is a hallway.
ReplyDeleteIn our dialog, I find you are preaching to the choir, so to speak. My lament is the divorcing of doctrine from ehtics. I find it happens too often, and I appreciate the video of Fr. Barron. When they are divorced you really have neither. As I have said, correct doctrine and understanding of scripture are very important, yet one can proclaim correct doctrines without allowing Christ to transform. The substitution of theological arguments and statements for following Jesus is what I am rejecting.
I should of looked closer at the website I just assumed that you were Catholic from the title of the blog.
ReplyDeleteI am happy for the direction the conversation is taking and glad you agree with so much of it. I was hoping so, so that I make one last push as I ask you to recall all you have spoken above when I quote you here "In all of Jesus' instructions about the final judgment, the criteria is not how correct are one's beliefs, but how one served.".
So maybe you agree that it is not possible for this statement to be true. We have already discussed the example of when Jesus plainly says those who teach contrary to the True doctrine of life will in fact be judged most severely.
You are most correct we are not to live like the Pharisee's but that we must live in Faith that works through Charity/Love.
The Pharisee you point out is a warning to be heeded, thank you for making it, but it doesn't mean that he or anyone else wont be judged for maintaining the doctrines revealed to us. Most certainly the opposite we are to be firmly establish and maintaining ourselves in them through love. We are to have both and God notices when something He gives us is missing or hasn't gained an increase and He judges us accordingly. It is also most certainly true that I as a Catholic will be judged far more severely than any protestant. I have been surrounded by the pure truth, unstained. Much has been given to me and much is expected.
A final example Ephesians 3:10 that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
Doctrine is any truth taught by the Church as necessary for acceptance by the faithful. The truth may be either formally revealed (as the Real Presence), or a theological conclusion (as the canonization of a saint), or part of the natural law (as the sinfulness of contraception). In any case, what makes it doctrine is that the Church authority teaches that it is to be believed. This teaching may be done either solemnly in ex cathedra pronouncements or ordinarily in the perennial exercise of the Church's magisterium or teaching authority. Dogmas are those doctrines which the Church proposes for belief as formally revealed by God.
To be in full knowledge of and reject true doctrine is to knowingly reject God. Which is what I was leading the Catholic I thought I was writing to recall.
To the protestant I have been surprised to find I genuinely understand your suspicion and would invite you to fully explore the Church you were baptized into, the Catholic Church. Read her magesterial teachings in their entirety, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a great place to start. The catholics you cited on your list are very good but they are no replacements for the magesterium they do not derive their authority from our Lord and quit honestly even lack the depth of the saints and doctors of the Church. I noticed from the list your taste tend toward the very modern and humbly suggest maybe experience the catholicity of the Church/the faith that exists in all places at all times. Try the writings of the Church fathers, and works of the medieval saints. I think you will find something wonderful.
Most people when they think of the Catholic Church start pointing to our sinners of which I am one but the Church gives us the Saints as examples, not the sinners, for it is in them we are confronted with the power of God to change lives. I think you also will find in them a Faith worth having, one that is most attractive. They did not fear doctrine but lived it. we can too.
Sincerly, Peace be with you my sister.